1. Field of the Invention
The invention disclosed broadly relates to the field of computer networks, and more particularly relates to the field of measuring the effectiveness of advertisement on a World Wide Web site by gauging the number of visits (or "hits").
2. Description of the Related Art
The World-Wide-Web ("Web") has become immensely popular largely because of the ease of finding information and the user-friendliness of today's browsers. A feature known as hypertext allows a user to access information from one Web page to another by simply pointing (using a pointing device such as a mouse) at the hypertext and clicking. Another feature that makes the Web attractive is having the ability to process the information (or content) in remote Web pages without the requirement of having a specialized application program for each kind of content accessed. Thus, the same content is viewed across different platforms. Browser technology has evolved to enable running of applications that manipulate this content across platforms.
The Web relies on an interpretative scripting language called HTML (Hyper Text Mark Up Language) which is capable of rendering text, graphics, images, audio, real-time video, etc. on a Web compliant browser. HTML is independent of client operating systems. So HTML renders the same content across a wide variety of software and hardware operating platforms. Software platforms include Windows 3.1, Windows NT, Apple's Copeland and Macintosh, and IBM's AIX and OS/2, HP Unix, etc. Popular compliant Web-Browser includes Microsoft's Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator, Lynx and Mosaic. HTML interprets links to files, images, sound clips, etc. through the use of hypertext links. Upon user invocation of a hypertext link to a Web page, the browser initiates a network request to receive the desired Web page.
Advertisement on the Web is typically delivered on Web Pages in static or animated areas called banners. These banners are generally used on various popular Web sites. One common type of Web site for third party advertisement is on search engines Web sites such as AltaVista, Lycos, Excite, and Yahoo. Advertisers pay for advertisement space on these Web sites.
Advertisers on the Web, like advertisers in other media such as print, radio, or television, want to gauge the effectiveness of their advertisement. A common measure of advertisement effectiveness is to measure how large an audience the advertisement has reached. Newspapers can supply subscription information for different markets served. In the case of television, Nielsen ratings and other reliable third party measurement systems exist to determine viewership. Analogously, advertisers on the Web desire to determine the number of "hits" or selections their advertisement received on a given Web page. As with advertisements in other media, advertisers using the Web only desire to keep using advertising that generates an acceptable number of "hits."
The mechanism used to collect statistics on Web sites is called CGI (common gateway interface), which is a standard for interfacing external applications with information servers, such as Web servers or HTTP (hyper-text-transfer-protocol) servers. A program, called a CGI script, written to the CGI standard is invoked when a Web browser user selects an advertisement usually by "clicking" with a mouse. The CGI script runs on the Web server and transmits the selection information to a database. Later the database can be examined to report the number of "hits" corresponding advertisement on the Web server received. The cost of advertisement space on a Web page is directly related to the popularity or number of "hits" the each Web site receives. There is a motivation for Web site providers and advertising agencies to inflate the popularity of a Web site in order to sell advertising space. This motivation of inflating the popularity of a Web site owner on one side and the advertiser on the other creates an atmosphere of mistrust. In other advertisement media, such as television, there are provided third party systems such as Nielsen ratings that provide statistics on the audience size. In Web based advertising, no trusted independent third party mechanism exists, therefore a need exists to provide a method and apparatus to measure "hit" rates on Web sites.
In trying to determine the number of "hits" on a particular Web site, advertisers have HTTP options to track requests. The HTTP specification on which the communications between Web sites across the Web is based includes a feature to carry the referring Web page which resulted in the access of the current Web site. The referring page feature is a chronology option for revealing which Web page "linked to" or referenced the current page. This referring Web page feature is completely optional. Therefore, this referring Web page option may not be implemented on a given brand of Web browser. Therefore a need exists to measure requests for Web site advertisement where this referring Web page option in the HTML specification is not implemented or supported.
Another problem that exists when using the referring page option results from Web advertisers using third party advertisement agencies to purchase advertisement space on Web sites. Advertisers on the Web, as in other media, such as print, radio or television, often make use of third party advertising agencies to buy advertisement space. Advertising agencies manage the contractual requirements for buying advertisement space on selected Web pages. Turning to an example, suppose Company A desires to place its advertisement on another company's Web site, call it Company C, and Company A engages a third company, Company B, a Web advertising agency to act as an intermediary. If Company B, the adverting agency, uses the HTTP referring page option when placing Company A's advertisement on Company C's Web page, the referring page is actually Company C. Unless Company A monitors and tracks every advertisement sold by Company B to Company C's Web site, it will be difficult for Company A to measure the effectiveness of its advertisement on Company C's Web site. Accordingly, a need exists to measure hits on a Web site when using an advertising agency without the requirement to constantly engage the advertiser. The problem of referring pages is compounded when a company advertises on several sites concurrently. The advertisers may not even know the advertising agency placed advertisement on a given site. It is not unusual for large volume Web advertisers such as Microsoft or IBM to have their advertisement displayed on many different sites concurrently to reach a large audience. Therefore a need exist to provide reliable measurement of advertisement effectiveness on the Web when using third party advertising agencies.